The Struve Arc

The Struve Arc is an UNESCO protected chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Northern Norway to the Black Sea.

These are points of a survey, carried out between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, which represented the first accurate measuring of a long segment of a meridian.

This helped to establish the exact size and shape of the planet and marked an important step in the development of earth sciences and topographic mapping.

Scientific collaboration

It is an extraordinary example of scientific collaboration among scientists from different countries, and of collaboration between monarchs for a scientific cause.

The original arc consisted of 258 main triangles with 265 main station points. The listed site, which stretches through 10 countries and over 2,820 kilometres, includes 34 of the original station points.

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